Hey #sysadmin folks!

[mwl@io.mwl.io]

Hey #sysadmin folks! Is "short stroking" a hard drive still a thing?

For the youngsters: this was when you used only the fastest part of a hard drive, leaving the slow parts of the disk empty. Short stroking improved spinning rust performance.

I haven't heard of this in years, and it seems that with LBA abstracting the drive innards would eliminate the benefits. (You'd still get extra spare blocks for when the drive starts failing, sure.)

[bob_zim@infosec.exchange]

@mwl It’s not a thing anymore on remotely modern drives. There isn’t really a fastest part of a drive anymore.

Data locality (i.e, arranging related data on sequential tracks to reduce seek distance) can still be a thing, but it’s mostly not worthwhile on multitasking systems. It’s too easy for the OS to stick some other I/O operation into your carefully planned sequence, thereby throwing off your minimal seeks.